So, wheres the controversy?
It's in a couple of places.
One, is that scientists are studying purely materialistic mechanisms for the origin of life itself -- this study is called abiogenesis. If the origin of life can be explained through purely materialistic processes, then that will eliminate the need to invoke God as a cause, and some people have a problem with that. And, although separate disciplines, abiogenesis and the theory of evolution as an explanation of the history of life on earth are pretty closely related (enough that I don't get too pedantic about separating them), so the two tend to get conflated.
The other problem is that people take the first two chapters of Genesis as the exact history of the earth and life on it. And, according to those people, this forms an important part of their "world view". At least they claim that discarding a literal reading of Genesis would shatter their entire "world view" -- it sounds odd to me, too, but I have no reason to not believe them when they say this. So it is very emotionally important to them that Genesis be promoted as literal history, and the entire fields of geology, biology, and cosmology be discarded.
It wouldn't be a problem if we could just dismiss these people as nutcakes and let them whine in their churches, but here in the U.S. they have a lot of political clout, and tend to use the political system to piss in the trough from which we all must drink.
If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a monkey.
Haven't you always wanted a monkey?
-- The Barenaked Ladies
™ Version 4.2